


Lachesism

by psalloacappella



Series: Equilibrium [8]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Anger, Angry Haruno Sakura, Angst, Belligerent Sexual Tension, F/M, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Multi, Post-War, Uchiha Sasuke Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 12:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20471186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalloacappella/pseuds/psalloacappella
Summary: "I have nightmares of you lying on the ground, in your blood, in a broken heap. And sometimes . . . I'm not upset about it."





	Lachesism

Sakura fails to hide her nonplussed expression as she takes in the sight of Uchiha Sasuke sitting in her living room. No, not just that. He is in her chair, mulling in profile, turned to the roaring fire in the grate in silence.

_Thunk._ The sound of paperwork hitting the dull wood causes him to turn his head, languishing like a lazy feline. His eyes ping once to the floor, where her bag now rests, then to her.

"Get out."

He nods once, and begins to rise.

"No, just, fucking sit. Just sit."

Lowers himself back into the chair, while her eyes slowly take in the fireplace, the heavy novel meticulously marked with a real, true bookmark. Because Uchiha Sasuke, on top of sitting in her chair in her apartment that he's been flitting in and out of like a phantom, marks books only with the proper tools and not the sticky tabs and jagged scraps of paper, or even scalpels, that Sakura does. One more ingratiating, endearing, maddening aspect of his life she files away for later because it's in her nature.

"I couldn't find Kaka-sensei." Breaking the mausoleum silence, she crouches to retrieve her bag. "Arousing suspicion at work isn't something I can do too much right now."

"We'll need to get him a message—"

"How about a hello?" she says sardonically. "After all, you're sitting in my chair."

Sasuke's eyebrows crease, almost like he's thinking about a complicated arithmetic problem. Getting to his feet and taking the book in one swift motion, he inhales. "You're . . . right. You worked all day. I shouldn't be here."

"No, you shouldn't," she snaps, now irritated at his pathetic attempts. She hates that he's here, emotionally stunted, trying. "But I appreciate that you're actually talking to me for the first time in seven years now that it's convenient for you, and you have nothing else to do since you can't escape and go on missions to continue to ignore me."

"Sakura—"

"Sit!"

Sasuke sits, the book resting on his lap. He stares down the barrel that is her thin, stock-straight finger, which with a well-placed poke could leave his ribs in pieces. Right now, it's like a bullet boring into his chest. He watches her let the bag slide to the floor again, abandoning it, chest heaving. Gearing up to speak, but the words are tangling themselves into knots behind her eyes and mouth. No tears, but cold, jagged glass, flint on which to sharpen a knife.

"I may have had to play that up to avoid suspicion," she starts, "but I'm still mad at you. I don't know what you think we are; I don't know why you're in my house! I want to stay alive and if the wrong people find out that we've omitted details, we will all go down."

"We shouldn't talk about—"

Her stomp resonates across the floor: The table, the lamp, his feet, and the book all jump. "Don't tell me what I can talk about. That's rich, Sasuke-kun."

For all the small ways he's tried to quietly sink into her skin, and no doubt, they are kind things, a fury still toils in her chest. An angry, coiled creature crafted of equal parts of love and hate, intertwined and leaving, heavily, a paperweight of calcified anxiety and anguish. He's pathetically domestic and hopelessly lost, tending to her garden and leaving her a clean stack of coats every week. Trying to alleviate the real worry that has taken up residence inside her, that this cannot last, that he's waiting to flee and leave the mess behind. Because somehow, despite being part of all the messes, he manages to set himself apart from them, and arrogantly so.

"I should have asked."

"Fine, great. Keep staying here, then," she mutters, trying to exit the conversation and choke down the words bubbling up in her throat, hot like acid.

"Sakura."

"It's fine, Naruto always crashing here too, anyway," she continues, swallowing hard, but the fury and anxiety is surging into her mouth. Her saliva thickens and the fog begins flooding her eyes and ears, the tipping point at which someone holds a plastic bag over her head and she begins to drown. Eyes finding the fireplace, then the hallway beyond, she lurches, feeling trapped and panicked, a bird with a bent wing thrashing at the walls of the cage.

Grabbing her wrist, Sasuke swings her around to look at him and seems unsettled by whatever he's seeing in her gaze. Again with the face, looking like he's counting to himself, _one, two, okay_, his voice is quiet as he says, "Whatever you need to say, say it."

In a swift movement, Sakura has her delicate fingers wound in Sasuke's shirt; yanking him upward, she braces herself for his reaction only to see his expression reflecting calm, the unbroken surface of a gentle pond. Only the knot in his throat, which moves as he allows one full swallow, betrays any discomfort. It's this, in the end, that splits her wide open.

"Do you remember," she hisses, "your fingers and how they felt around my neck? 'Cause I do. I fall asleep and wake up with shit tangled around my neck and all I can think of are your – fucking – hands." Angry tears swell in the corners of her eyes and she lets out a strangled sound like an animal kicked, something small like a rabbit, something in the way. "It's sitting on my chest, on my shoulders, Sasuke-kun, like I'm always carrying something I can't see, things that don't go away. They choke me and people don't know that even when I'm smiling, they're there."

Her fingers curl tighter, pulling his shirt uncomfortably tight, and just like at the hospital he's engulfed in waves of angry heat. Now the fabric pulls so tight but her knuckles do not relent, and he starts to feel his ribs shift as she raises him a little higher, just off the ground, arms shaking so hard he feels his stomach drop.

"I have nightmares of you lying on the ground, in your blood, in a broken heap. And sometimes . . . I'm not upset about it. You're done, you're dead. You'll never have children, and you'll never hurt me again, and maybe I'll have the chance to do something else, something normal that doesn't have to do with this team and this place. The tales would all be forgotten in old books and you would be gone. Except of course . . . I don't know how I'd live without you."

For a second, he thinks she will lower him to the ground; in a quick toss she releases him without warning, and his back lands in the chair. He gasps, the air stolen from his lungs, trying to silence it and keep his temper from boiling over. From being manhandled, and from listening to all of the things that sit in his heart and chime in his head, every day since his prison release. Telling him over and over that he will never be anything close to a decent man, and will never deserve a single second of her unrelenting grace.

Trembling, she finishes, "And if you were, then maybe I wouldn't hurt – _so_ – badly."

Another painful moan loosens itself from her throat, a pitying sound mingling with the creaking of the floorboards and the squealing song of bending tree trunks, bowed by the wind outside. Gingerly, Sasuke rises out of the chair once more and steps toward her, his movements measured despite the palpable fury in the air between them. Her eyes are cast askew; he sees the reflected flames in a tarantella, in a frenzied dance.

Raising his hands, his dark gaze lingers on her hair, waiting for her to turn back to him. He knows she can sense him and finally meets his gaze.

Looks to his right hand, then to her. He's asking for permission, ever stubborn, and doesn't know how to form the words.

"Hah." She feels a tear cut a salty, cool path down her cheek, and nods.

With unfamiliar hesitation, he carefully takes her upper arm and leans in. For one fleeting second she expects to feel his lips on her forehead, but it's his chin resting against it instead. You're hopeless, she says, not quite sure whom she's admonishing.

Quiet words, spoken only to her, are swallowed up by the crackling of the fire in the grate. The red paint swatch smolders along with the note she had given him, the dire warning along with the house key. He pulls her closer, and every tiny hair on her body stands to attention as his request seeps deep inside her bones, sends her mind into a dizzying mess. Like aches from the changes in weather, the fleeing of summer and the arrival of autumn, rushing up to meet the cold snap. His voice is low and shadowed and he hisses:

_"Use me."_

.

Two blondes let themselves into the house, and freeze. They frantically scramble to hide as they realize they have walked in on something fragile, something not meant for their eyes.


End file.
